Dave: I loathe mushrooms as a pizza topping.
Gene: I loathe Brusselsprouts as a pizza topping, anything else is fair game,… Well not chitterlings, but those two are out. Surprisingly, sauerkraut is a remarkably good pizza topping, esp. with ham or bacon.

In the 60s a Sauerkraut Packers Combine was offering free recipes for sauerkraut ice cream, but I have been told the Minnesota State Fair offers it every year, … I don’t know that the rumour is true, but it is believable. Powerful lot of dairy up there + powerful bunch of Old Country descendants = plausible existence of such.

Tomatoes were legally defined to be a vegetable (and not a fruit) by the US supreme court in 1893, case Nix v. Hedden. (Apparently fruits and vegetables were taxed differently, and someone was trying to pay the lower fruit rate for tomatoes.)

Yes, a botanist would consider tomatoes to be a fruit. A botanist would also consider cucumbers, zucchini, and pumpkins to be fruits. But when discussing human consumption of them it’s probably better to ask a nutritionist, for whom all four are vegetables.

I suspect it probably helps Amanda that she has one parent all to herself? Subconsciously, probably. Like, she can get away from Selkie, and she has parental attention that she doesn’t need to share, part of the time. The whole lack-of-attention-because-a-zillion-kids thing may well have exacerbated a “bad attention is better than no attention” mindset in Amanda.

Once there’s not an Attention Shortage, Selkie becomes a nuisance, not an actual threat of competition for a scarce resource. (It’s like cats that don’t like each other; if they know that they aren’t going to have to fight over food, and can avoid each other when it’s not mealtime, they usually chill out…)

I’m glad to see it too, of course. Amanda probably hardly realizes that she’s slipping from “other kid is a threat to me” to “well, I guess I can share dad with her” to “okay, I suppose if I have to have a sister then I can cope…”

Excellent. Another ingredient I can get someone else’s share of! (…I’m hungry. A Mushroom/Green Pepper/maybe Pineapple pizza is sounding marvelous. Any non-meat thing that other people don’t want and YES PLZ!)

The reason for mushrooms is a taste effect called “Umami”. Mushrooms are one way to achieve this, but there are other ways to get the effect, too. It’s the fifth essence; sweet, salt, sour, bitter, umami.

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS.
Like both girls just Roll with it, and honestly that’s a pretty good excuse Selkie’s got. Fungus growth as a complication of a genetic condition. Out there, but personal and gross enough to be less likely to garner more questions.

I want to give Amanda this one, many years ago, my wife and I had breakfast at a diner where she worked. As such, the crew knew both of us an was relaxed around us. I’d ordered eggs with hash. As she put down the plate, the waitress quietly said “woof.” My wife thought it was hilarious, I looked down and could only see a plate of fried dog food! It took months before I could eat hash again.